writer… filmmaker… stranger in the shadows

My Books

I am currently writing a trilogy of novels called the Dark Harbour Tales. The first book in the series was released in 2016, and the follow up appeared in 2017. When I say “I am currently writing a trilogy of novels”, I of course mean that they were written by my alternate dimension me, a chap called Joseph Kiel. Yep. True story.

The first book in the series is called Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Soul Searcher, and is about a group of college students who are discovering the town. One of them researches a historical murder mystery, two of them are enticed into the local vigilante organisation, and one of them falls in love with a siren, the most beautiful girl in the whole town. The rich narrative also involves the search for a missing treasure with magical powers, criminal overlords, shadowy figures, and the sadistic owner of the seaside amusements.

The sequel is called Dark Harbour: The Tale of the Night Shiner, and this book takes a bit of a different tone. A lot of the original characters return, as does a brutal creature, the Night Shiner, who swoops on people in the dark hours, killing off the losers and the wasters. The townsfolk then turn to the vigilante organisation, Halo of Fires, to take on the impossible task of destroying the beast that has haunted the town for centuries. So this tale has a strong horror / supernatural leaning. It is a definite page-turning roller coaster, so say the people who have read it so far!

Or if you want to cut to the chase and get the books through Amazon then click the Amazon logo. I’d love to know what you think about these books given that they’re my first ones, so please do let me know, and any review on Amazon will be warmly appreciated! Except if it’s only one star… In that case just vent to me in an email and we’ll keep this to ourselves.

The final book in the series is something I’m currently working on but I don’t know when it’s going to appear. Hopefully not too many years away. I also have other book projects on the go, so there should be something appearing in the meantime…

In fact, in February 2018 I released my latest novel, a stand-alone vampire comedy adventure called Broken Melody. This one is something of a cross-medium mashup as it is set in the same story-world as my film Shadows of a Stranger, and some of the Shadows characters even make cameo appearances. I thought it would be fun to merge my two worlds with this book. Broken Melody has a different tone to the Dark Harbour tales in that it has a faster pace, a lot of twisted humour, and some rather graphic chapters! It’s definitely for a mature audience with a strong stomach, but if you feel you can handle it then please click the image and get yourself a copy.

The story is about a young, carefree student called Melody who wakes up one morning with a ‘fangover’ and must find the vampire who infected her before sunrise, before she will make her transformation into a blood-sucking undead creature…

So what about book number four? As soon as I find the time I might get cracking on another one of my ideas, something completely different to Dark Harbour or stories about vampires. It’s going to combine two of my other passions: comedy and football. Those two things seem to go well together sometimes it seems. Or maybe I’ll do something completely unexpected and write a soppy romance. You never know.

But until I release anything else you’ve got these three books to keep you going, and I’m hopeful you’ll enjoy them.